


Can't Separate from Everything

by alltheircrimesarejust



Category: Mighty Ducks (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Unbeta'd, alternate perspective, hot off the press, playing with verb tenses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 02:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12854697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheircrimesarejust/pseuds/alltheircrimesarejust
Summary: Ted Orion wasn’t going to be that coach. He made the decision long before he first saw them on the ice. He was going to be consistent and he wasn’t going to overstep his bounds only to trip backward over them when things went wrong. There would be no replacing Gordon Bombay and he decided that that was probably a good thing--A character study and a new perspective on some scenes from D3 as perceived by Ted Orion. Also a character study of Charlie in the third movie too.





	Can't Separate from Everything

Ted Orion hadn’t lied when he said he watched the tapes and left it at that. He just also hadn’t specified whose tapes. Of course, he’d watched the Junior Goodwill Games and he’d watched the kids on the ice, kept track of the names and numbers, the skills and weaknesses. He’d also watched the bench; he’d watched the transformation of Gordon Bombay from people’s coach to slick tyrant and back. It had led him to an archival crawl, first through District 5’s games and then to Gordon Bombay himself, hot shot scorer in court and in the minor leagues. 

Those tapes had led him to make many assessments. 

First, the team was a tight-knit group, a found family. 

Second, they loved their coach as part of that family. 

Third, their coach loved them back. 

Fourth, their coach had let them get complacent in their favorite roles on and off the ice. He was going to have to shake that up, move some positions, unlock some potential. 

Fifth, Gordon Bombay was a good man but one prone to distractions, who got caught up in his own ego as easily as he got kicked out of it. He was, at his best moments, a brilliant and heartfelt leader and, at his worst, the dictator he’d seen in those televised hockey games, all tailored suit and ragged team. He’d seen the way the man swore up and down that these kids were the real deal but still jumped at a chance to go bigger and better, barely any transition time between. 

Ted Orion wasn’t going to be that coach. He made the decision long before he first saw them on the ice. He was going to be consistent and he wasn’t going to overstep his bounds only to trip backward over them when things went wrong. There would be no replacing Gordon Bombay and he decided that that was probably a good thing. 

The team weren’t going to carry on as they had either. That was the second decision Ted Orion made. Their main goalie was complacent and their captain went from on the ice to off, seemingly without a big picture plan. As a whole, the team could score and very well at that, but again and again, stronger teams could bust through their absolute lack of defense. He saw it with Iceland and they saw it with Blake and that unsanctioned Varsity game. They relied on their trademark tricks and failed to adapt when the other team did. 

When he hit that ice and broke up the fight, he’d thought that would be the splash of cold water that would wake them up, make them realize that they needed to improve and grow. For most of them, it was. For Charlie Conway, it was apparently a stab to the heart and a direct betrayal. The look in his eyes told him something else too. 

Charlie Conway might have been angry with him, pushed around by a bullying varsity team and strained by change, but he was angrier about something else. Something bigger.

\--

Without Conway stoking resentment, the team fell into their new positions. Goldberg shocked everyone and himself most of all when he realized that he could skate and take a check and get back up. Orion wasn’t surprised. Bombay had wasted Gaffney as a goalie for most of the games and Goldberg had gotten comfortable in the net, talking trash. Sure, he whined and protested about the change, complaining halfway through his first game until he worked himself up and checked his opposing team’s counterpart into the boards. His expression had lit up and he’d glanced over at Orion, the eureka moment across his face. 

He’d surprised everyone except Coach Orion, who’d known it all along. 

They were playing better and, per their teachers, some of them were starting to handle the class load. Russ Tyler, to everyone’s surprise, had an aptitude for history. 

Fulton Reed and Charlie Conway had an aptitude for disappearing. For Reed, it was a day and a half before he was back in classes. Orion didn’t let him back on the ice until he proved that he could be steady about his attendance and commitment. These kids needed some damned consistency.

Charlie Conway took longer. 

Charlie Conway took a funeral. 

Orion attended but it wasn’t for Hans. They’d never met. He attended because the man clearly meant so much to his team–and these Warrior Ducks were his team now–and they needed him. They needed the consistency this time, not the shakeup. 

Charlie Conway stood next to his mother and Gordon Bombay stood near them, but not quite at their side, not quite finishing the family picture. There was an empty space where someone else should have been or where Gordon should have placed himself. Either way, it needed filling. 

That was why he let Gordon know when he’d take his daughter onto the ice. That was why he pretended not to see them while he skated. 

\--

Somewhere between that bus door conversation and the scholarship hearing, Adam Banks came to him. 

“I can’t play with the varsity team,” he said and Orion frowned. 

“You’re more than good enough to play at their level. If you’re serious about hockey, that’s the kind of skillset you need.” He’d been about to say more but Adam stopped him, shaking his head rapidly, like he was trying to shake away some other emotion. 

It all came out then. Orion had known about the bullying, the stealing of Wu’s lunch. He’d also known that Charlie had both retaliated and then made sure his teammate ate. He hadn’t known about the clothes dumped in the shower. He definitely hadn’t known about dinner and he knew Banks was telling the truth when he said he hadn’t known that the varsity team was going to strand them. 

“They don’t get it,” he said earnestly. “If someone pranked them like that, they could just swipe their credit cards and it’d go away.” Adam didn’t need to tell Orion the other part of it; Banks was from Edina. He had one of those hypothetical credit cards too and if he’d known, Orion would bet his skates that Adam would have made a phone call home and then taken care of the bill. 

Banks came from money. No one else on the team did. The prank hadn’t just been an embarrassment; it had cost them dearly and reminded them of that. 

“I can’t play with them,” Adam repeated and Orion understood. Adam Banks had the skills to make it but he also had the integrity to know better than that team. He wasn’t about to punish empathy.

Ted Orion was no Gordon Bombay. He had spent the last few weeks emphasizing that to all and sundry, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t think like a lawyer when he needed to. “I think it says in your scholarship contract that you have to be on the JV team with your other team mates to qualify.” It was a fact that Banks’ father could afford to pay away but money wasn’t the issue here. 

“I’m sure your team will be happy to have you back.” 

Adam’s smile was one of absolute relief. 

\--

The first practice with Conway back on the ice is a breath of fresh air. The team is already good, has improved vastly, but Gordon Bombay was right too. Charlie Conway is the heart of the team. His presence puts a little joy into the practice and Orion doesn’t need to coerce them with laps or drills. He instructs; Charlie leads; they follow. 

Maybe he does deserve that C. Almost. 

The only one who holds himself apart is Banks. He keeps distant from Tyler and Gaffney and ducks his head when someone laughs and calls him Cake-Eater. Despite the obvious affection behind it, it’s also said as a marker of difference. They’ve welcomed him back but he still waits for the other skate to fall. 

Adam Banks keeps glancing to Charlie for approval but Charlie’s too busy going over an agility drill with Fulton. Good, Orion thinks, because Fulton needs it. He’s a good player but still a nervous skater. Something Charlie knows well. 

It’s why Orion dismisses them from practice and watches them file out, sticking out an arm to bar Charlie from leaving the rink. 

“Hey, Coach, what–“ 

Orion shakes his head and closes the gate so that it’s just the two of them on the ice. “Laps,” he says. Charlie shoots him a filthy look but starts and Orion follows, setting a very sedate pace as they make circles.

“Your dad teach you how to skate?” 

Orion’s not surprised when Charlie face darkens and he looks away. It’s an unfair question, leading him, but he needs Charlie to say it out loud. “I don’t really remember him. I guess the closest I had was Coach.” 

“Must be tough having to go it alone all the time. You and your mom?” There’s sympathy to it but like the last question, this is a statement that’s designed to provoke. Conway’s been acting like the world is against him this whole time with Ted Orion leading the charge. That anger’s made him volatile and protective, breaking sticks and starting fights for his teammates. 

“She remarried for a while.” That explains the gap between Bombay and the Conways. It doesn’t take a detective to figure out that whoever this stepfather is (was), he’s no Gordon Bombay. “He bailed.” 

They’ve come to a stop, though Orion doesn’t call attention to it. He just lets Charlie lean against the rail, eyes cast down as he puts a divot in the ice with a toe pick. Clearly, he’s holding a lot inside himself and trying to keep it from being seen, from being heard. Orion almost doesn’t hear it but it comes out. “Coach bailed on her too.” 

The last puzzle piece of Charlie Conway’s volatility falls into place.

It’s possible to love and admire a man and also resent the hell out of him. Orion knows that already but he doesn’t think that that paradox has dawned on Charlie. It’s hard to be torn between Gordon Bombay as his hero and as the man who let him down. The anger can’t be directed at the actual target and so it explodes outward, at everyone and everything. 

“I learned something a few years ago after I quit the North Stars,” Orion says, letting Charlie fill in the gap for that timeline. “Anger is exhausting.” 

Already, he’s working himself up to a fight. Orion puts up a hand to stop him. “I didn’t say you have to let it go, put it in a box and pretend it wasn’t there. Isn’t healthy,” he says. “But you can’t be like a bomb either. Shrapnel goes flying, hits everyone around you whether they deserve it or not. Isn’t healthy either.” 

“So, what am I supposed to do?” Charlie looks suddenly exhausted. Orion isn’t surprised; he’d been serious when he said that. 

Orion shrugs. “That’s up to you. Seems to me like a lot of people have left you hanging, one way or another, and you have every right to be upset about that. You just can’t take it out on someone else who happens to be closer. Burns a lot of bridges.” 

“Banksy?” 

“Banks,” he agrees. “I heard what you said to him on the ice.” At least Charlie looks appropriately shamed, truly sorry about what he said. They both know Banks doesn’t deserve it. He thinks, in his heart, Charlie knows he’d been out of line and that his friend isn’t the type to just abandon him, to play a sick joke. 

Charlie looks back up at him and blows out a breath of air. He doesn’t ask it out loud but Orion knows that he’s asking for advice from him. It means he respects what he has to say. Orion thinks maybe they’ve both built a bridge just now. 

“Do you remember what I said on the ice? About confidence, even when you’re not winning?” Charlie nods. “I told you it isn’t just about hockey. It’s about life. Strength is like that too. It’s easy to try to punch your way into being right, pummel the facts into shape, but that’s not really strength. It’s just more anger.” 

Real strength, he knows, is about having the courage to admit when he’s done wrong. Real strength is unreservedly saying as much and asking forgiveness without trying to qualify it with excuses. Orion thinks Charlie’s figured that out just now too. 

“Gordon Bombay told me something about the last game in LA,” Orion says, seemingly changing the subject. Charlie doesn’t quite jump at his mentor’s name and Orion thinks it’s because the kid is slowly beginning to understand the paradoxical admiration and anger that’s inside him. “You put on a new jersey but that wasn’t what got you the win. You all recognized that you were a team, all of you united.” 

“Ducks fly together.” 

Orion nods. “And if one of the flock gets pulled away and tries to make its way back? Do you ignore him?” 

“No!” 

“Why not?”

Charlie nods, blows out another breath but smiles this time. “Because ducks fly together.” He says it softly now and Orion thinks he understands. 

“Get out of here,” he says, capping him once on the shoulder and nodding at Charlie to go. He waits until the kid is gone before he goes back into his office and takes a garbage bag out of his foot locker. Green, purple, and white jerseys sit inside of it, crumpled and in need of a wash, but still good. 

\-- 

The next time he sees Conway and Banks, they’re walking across campus. Banks is laughing and Conway has an arm slung around his shoulders. They look the most at ease that Orion thinks they’ve been since the semester started.

Orion decides that today’s practice is when he’ll give their jerseys back.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from Less Than Jake's "All My Best Friends are Metalheads" because it's 2017 and I'm still late 90's ska-loving trash. 
> 
> More seriously, one of the things I've noticed when watching these movies as an adult is that the adult characters are really inconsistently written. Orion goes from distant hard ass to father figure off-camera without any indication, really, of why. So this is my attempt to reconcile that characterization.


End file.
